“It is a sweet craft!” said the staid lieutenant, yielding to an admiration natural to his habits, “and one that might serve as a yacht for the Queen!  This is some trifler with the revenue, or perhaps a buccaneer from the islands.  The fellow shows no ensign!”

“Give him notice, Sir, that he has to do with one who bears the royal commission,” returned Ludlow, speaking from habit, and half-unconscious of what he said.  “We must teach these rovers to respect a pennant.”

The report of the cannon startled the absent man and caused him to remember the order.

“Was that gun shotted?” he asked, in a tone that sounded like rebuke.

“Shotted, but pointed wide, Sir; merely a broad hint.  We are no dealers in dumb show, in the Coquette, Captain Ludlow.”

“I would not injure the vessel, even should it prove a buccaneer.  Be careful, that nothing strikes her, without an order.”

“Ay, ’twill be well to take the beauty alive, Sir; so pretty a boat should not be broken up, like an old hulk.  Ha! there goes his bunting, at last!  He shows a white field—­can the fellow be a Frenchman, after all?”

The lieutenant took a glass, and for a moment applied it to his eye, with the usual steadiness.  Then he suffered the instrument to fall, and it would seem that he endeavored to recall the different flags that he had seen during the experience of many years.

“This joker should come from some terra incognita;” he said.  “Here is a woman in his field, with an ugly countenance, too, unless the glass play me false—­as I live, the rogue has her counterpart for a figure-head!—­Will you look at the ladies, Sir?”

Ludlow took the glass, and it was not without curiosity that he turned it toward the colors the hardy smuggler dared to exhibit, in presence of a cruiser.  The vessels were, by this time, sufficiently near each other, to enable him to distinguish the swarthy features and malign smile of the sea-green lady, whose form was wrought in the field of the ensign, with the same art as that which he had seen so often displayed in other parts of the brigantine.  Amazed at the daring of the free-trader, he returned the glass, and continued to pace the deck, in silence.  There stood near the two speakers an officer whose head and form began to show the influence of time, and who, from his position, had unavoidably been an auditor of what passed.  Though the eye of this person, who was the sailing-master of the sloop, was rarely off the threatening cloud, except to glance along the wide show of canvas that was spread, he found a moment to take a look at the stranger.